June 7, 2022

■ Uvalde native Matthew McConaughey makes passionate plea for gun reform at White House press briefing (ABC News) / 'Some tension between the White House press corps and the press staff' (Jake Sherman) / 'After taking a few questions at the press briefing, multiple reporters stress the need for a longer briefing from @PressSec.' (Moshe Schwartz) / How Fox News has dominated the White House briefing (Washington Post)

■ January 6 Committee Hearing: What CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane will watch for (Washingtonian) / An infamous day. A search for answers. Will America tune in? (AP News) / Jan. 6 Congressional hearings: Networks tee up live history for ‘unprecedented’ primetime TV spectacle (The Wrap)

■ Here's how Yamiche Alcindor keeps viewers engaged with Washington Week (Adweek) 

■ CNN evaluating partisan talent as part of push to make coverage more neutral (Axios) 

■ Kara Swisher leaves the New York Times to return to Vox Media (Bloomberg) / ‘To who wonder why, here’s my reason for all I do via, obvi, Sondheim: There's a part of you always standing by / Mapping out the sky, finishing a hat / Starting on a hat, finishing a hat / Look, I made a hat / Where there never was a hat’ (Kara Swisher) 

■ 'How could I sit at my desk as Ukrainian children die?': Small-town newspaperman heads to war (The Guardian) 

■ The reporter who impersonated a cop and the sheriff who helped him (The Paper.) 

■ The incredible shrinking Richmond Times-Dispatch: A year after a Pulitzer win, the RTD hemorrhages staff as Lee Enterprises cuts newsrooms to the bone. (Style Weekly)

■ Twitter used to be a necessity for journalists. What is it now? (Poynter) / Young journalists of color say Twitter is a tool for networking and industry info (Teen Vogue) 

■ Don't believe everything you read about the man in this photo (New York Times) / How a fake juror in Depp vs. Heard trial went viral on TikTok (CNN) 

■ During Watergate, John Mitchell left his wife. She called Bob Woodward. (Washington Post) / All the newsroom’s men: How one-third of 'The Watergate Three' got written out of journalism history (Nieman Lab) 

Press freedom

■ AP reporter removed during tense intro press conference for Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour (New York Post) 

■ Opinion: The nation is watching Uvalde, the press must be allowed to do its job (Houston Chronicle) / Bikers, cops block journalists in Uvalde (Richard Prince) 

■ State Department accuses Russia of 'full assault' on media freedom (The Hill) / Opinion: This Russian journalist blew up her life to protest Putin’s war. Now she’s in limbo. (Washington Post) 

■ Brazilian police open criminal probe amid search for British journalist (Reuters) / Hopes dim, anger grows in British journalist’s disappearance in Brazil (Washington Post) 

■ Senators call for investigation into killing of US journalist in West Bank (Washington Post) 

■ Dems urge Biden admin to protect Mexican journalists amid killings (Axios)

■ Dutch court shown video of famed crime reporter's killing and alleged messages by suspects: ‘Everybody screamed’ (AP via CBS News) / Prosecutors seek life sentences for murder of Dutch crime reporter (Reuters)

"We cannot look at our published stories as the end of the journey. When we publish a story, that’s the beginning of the conversation with the community, it’s the beginning of potential change, and the beginning of more stories to be told. How are we sustaining the conversation? How do we make sure that the story seeps down to every level? How else are we going to hold people accountable and inspire change?" 

-- Paul Cheung, CEO at the Center for Public Integrity, via Center for Cooperative Media

New York Times writer and author Elizabeth Williamson is among journalists confronting the rampant rise and spread of conspiracy theories through her reporting and research. Her current work has focused around unraveling the targeted misinformation and lies spread after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the surviving families’ lawsuits against Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and the election disinformation fueling the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack. 

In this instructional program with the National Press Club Journalism Institute, Williamson will share her reporting and research process, along with insights she gained as she connected the dots on how conspiracy theories grow. Williamson, whose critically-acclaimed book “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth” published this spring, will describe how she threaded together more than 400 interviews, 10,000 pages of court testimony and other records, and on-the-ground reporting to trace a line from conspiracy theories around Sandy Hook to Jan. 6, 2021. 

Registration is open for this program, which will take place on Friday, June 10 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET.